Several years ago I started collecting the best items from my Facebook postings of the previous year for this blog -- for example, the best Portland Streetcar adventures of the year, the best Portland Walking Tour incidents of the year, the funniest typos and English errors in my editing work, and of course, the best puns and wordplay of the past year.
I’ve been so busy with other things that I actually missed two years of year’s best puns. So here’s the best of 2016. You have been warned. . . .
Jan. 10: Faces-the-Sea was chief of a coastal First Nations tribe. One day he had the bright idea of building a breakwater in the bay to catch cod fish that swam over it during high tide and would become trapped behind it when the tide went out.
The tribe thought such a dam would be a splendid and easy way to catch many fish, after the initial hard work of having to build the structure. It seemed to work: The pool behind the submerged stone wall captured many cod.
But alas, the breakwater collapsed as the tide went out again, and all the fish escaped. In disgrace, Faces-the-Sea exiled himself from the tribe. The people agreed:
It was a cod dam shame.
Feb. 21: Although the King had married a Queen for appearance's sake, he preferred to spend his time with pretty young men. The Queen began to suspect the truth when she overheard him singing to himself, “I’m always chasing reign beaus. . . . ”
Feb. 28: I will never forget the time I auditioned before a playwright who was producing a new play. She loved my audition, but didn't really have a suitable role for me in the show . . . until she got the idea of ripping several scenes out of another work in progress and inserting the character from those pages into the current show.
I realized she was tearing me a part.
March 3: Joe wanted one of those smart houses -- you know, the ones where you can control the HVAC, electricity, water, and everything remotely through your smartphone. Every system responded to his mobile except the faucet next to the microwave and range.
So, you know, he had everything but the kitchen synch.
March 14: Most nights when I take the dog out for her final walk, we hear a chorus of bullfrogs croaking on the Willamette.
It's kind of a ribeting experience.
Apr. 21: Hippocrates, a physician in the age of Pericles who’s often cited as the father of modern medicine, spent his entire life trying to deal with his patients’ ailments with bowel obstruction. He studied the problem all his life but died never having discovered that benign and malignant growths were the cause.
Medical historians refer to Hippocrates’s efforts as the Polyponesian War.
Apr. 26: Once he had been diagnosed with Type II diabetes, Jerry’s wife began to watch his diet more closely. He could only have his favorite breakfast -- waffles with extract of maple tree xylem sap -- syruptitiously.
June 12: He flew a small plane from Nome west to Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
You'd have to say he was kind of over-Bering.
June 16: Tonight one of my book groups was discussing the recent biography of Marie Equi, a Portland physician, lesbian, and Socialist-Progressive who treated the poor, performed abortions, supported labor causes and strikes, and was convicted of sedition and imprisoned in San Quentin for protesting U.S. participation in the First World War.
One of the members of my group told us about going to see where her remains are kept, in the Portland Memorial Mausoleum.
She said, “Fortunately, I knew how to read a map, ’cause it was kind of cryptic--”
At which point I interjected (of course), “So to speak. . . . ”
June 30: Look, all I can say is, my mind is pretty fluid and strange in the early morning. It was about 6:35 a.m. and I was standing on the northbound platform of the streetcar line at SW Moody and Meade, when I suddenly got this mental image of a Dan Piraro cartoon scripted by Stephan Pastis.
Picture this: Alan Ladd in chaps, cowboy hat, and six shooters, being serenaded by the Andrews Sisters singing "Bei mir bist du Shane. . . "
July 8: Everybody was crazy about Juan’s sponge cake custard dessert. Nobody could figure out what made it so much better than everyone else's. One day, Selina sneaked into his home when Juan was making a big batch for a charity sale and saw what he added to the eggs, sugar, condensed milk, evaporated milk, and vanilla: a couple of his own boogers!
After that, no one would touch Juan's baked goods, because now everyone knew he was a phlegm-flan man.
Aug. 7: Whenever he was enraged at anything, Herbert wrote about it in a special, separate journal.
He referred to it as his choler-ing book.
Sept. 2: The will stipulated that only blood descendants would be allowed to use the restroom off the great hall.
So it became known as the heir head.
Sept. 4: I used to disdain wooden clubs in favor of only longswords or broadswords.
But more recently I’ve been brandishing out.
Sept. 13: Carole said she had signed up for a course on the prophets of the Hebrew Bible -- Jeremiah, Micah, and the rest.
I remarked, “I thought Reform Judaism was a non-prophet organization.”
Sept. 18: A guy tried to get me to invest in a startup that’s going to market a Japanese sauce that’s vinegar and citrus-based, and dark brown in color, but I could tell it was a ponzu scheme.
Nov. 6: “Wonder where she’s going?” Carole asked rhetorically as we glanced at the tall, lean teenager winding her hair into a tight bun across the aisle of the streetcar. Ever since Oregon Ballet Theatre moved its offices and school into our neighborhood last winter, we’ve grown accustomed to spotting ectomorphic youths ride to and from the facility aboard the streetcar. I’ve often checked their fares when I’m on duty.
“Probably not the same place he is,” I murmured, nodding toward the scruffy young man (but older than the girl) sitting right behind her, bent almost in half above his lap with eyes closed, several days’ growth of beard, greasy long hair flopping down over his forehead and eyes, and clutching a plastic yellow Bic lighter and pack of Camels.
“He doesn’t look like a prima,” I went on. "More like ‘corpse de ballet.’ ”
Dec. 3: Her voice became forever rough and gravelly after her violent former boyfriend tried to strangle her with silk hose.
We all understood it was just a case of stocking hoarse.
Dec. 12: I think I just coined a new term for the incoming President, though it’ll only be an effective pun for the next six weeks: The Hair Apparent
Dec. 20: We ended up going to a big party during which everyone stood around in lines all night.
That’s right: We hit the queue ball.
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